All is well that ends well. Everybody has bad days, but good teams win regardless.
Note: I was most of the way done with this Sunday evening only to come back Monday and find that YouTube deleted the video I had all the clips from due to copyright. I had to scramble to replace everything with clips from the condensed version and timestamps from a different full version. This isn't nearly as clean, but it's the best I could do under the circumstances.
Lets start with this play from Syracuse's opening drive. Let's make note of a few things - 1. They choose not to block Nate Wiggins, 2. Malcolm Greene is shot out of a cannon and they hold onto him for dear life, 3. there's another screen to the boundary-side, and 4. the down and distance. They go right back to a similar play type on the next second and medium. Play design is really good but it's beat by a fantastic defensive call (we'll circle back to this momentarily). They motion away from the boundary to slide the backers, then have the WR run a little inside curl. It's essentially a pick-and-roll as he walls off the corner. Offensively, you anticipate a LB or that CB having to pursue through that "block" to get to Tucker on the sideline. But Greene comes in as the fourth man in pressure so Mascoll drops off into a flat zone and they run right into him. Next snap Greene triggers immediately and nearly ends the play on his own. Sheridan does a good job flowing while engaged which allows Mukuba time to get involved. Dino rolls the dice on fourth down, but Ruke makes a nice play sliding into the throwing lane to get them off the field.
Think Syracuse had been watching all those swing passes out of trips from a week ago? Two plays later, watch Shipley be patient and watch the interior OL move the line of scrimmage. A thing of beauty. Next second down we get into 21 personnel and Shipley motioning out takes their extra defender away, but we gain a numbers advantage by reading off the weakside DE. He stays at home to take DJ and it's 5v4 running right where the LB vacated to chase the swing pass. We end the drive with Shipley pounding it in and I'll be honest with y'all, after a fourth down stop and that fantastic drive I really thought we were about to run them out of the stadium.
I told you we'd circle back to the swing pass. We showed that flat zone off an unbalanced pressure a few times this year, like this one against BC. First play of Syracuse's next possession they go empty and look at KJ. Same thing with KJ in the flats two plays later. Here they hit a big throw across the middle and what I want to point out is the six-man protection. We saw BC do this and eliminate our pass rush. Syracuse had success as well. We've established a pair of tendencies. Our backside DE in standup posture bailing into the flat three times in the last eight snaps and them going into max protection. This TD shows both and it's the exact same look we gave them on Mascoll's TFL with Greene coming off the slot. Notice how Trotter is walled off in pursuit by the curl route. This is a case of showing a wrinkle too often and letting the opposing play caller set it up.
Speaking of tendencies, we love a second-and-long QB draw. Same 21 personnel play as Mafah's near-TD on the opening drive and the effect is the same. Only thing wrong with that play was Ngata throwing a man off the pile and taking us right back to where we started.
Aside from the formation, tell me what's different about this play and this play from last week? Davis and Beaux clear out and you let Zero work into an opening underneath. Only problem I have with it is not running it more. On an early down this is a great concept to steal a handful of yards and keep the run/pass percentage more balanced.
Here's a great example of perimeter blocking. Watch Briningstool turn his feet to keep his back to the ball. That is fantastic. EJ and Spector both get a good piece of their guys too.
Okay, elephant in the room. Let's talk about DJ. I want y'all to go back to the clip of our first snap. That seam shot to Davis Allen. Watch DJ's feet. You see how he shuffles his feet but never actually steps into the throw? It's all arm and it's just ever so slightly underthrown. Now look at this throw. His feet are glued to the ground. That's very 2021 of him. Here's the interception just a few plays after that and are we all looking at his feet? He shuffles, the front foot gets heavy and he shifts his weight instead of stepping into it. You can literally see his arm drag in real time. Schematically, this play is a smash concept. What that means is you're running a curl/flat/quick out underneath with a corner/fade/deep out over top of it. This is deadly against any coverage because it forces a defender to collapse on the underneath route which opens a window to hit it over their head. Conversely if they sink over the deeper route, you've got a really easy completion. On that third down DJ shows poor mechanics, but it's just a poor read. He knows he needs eight and he locks in on Ngata. Briningstool does a fantastic job of running his route to the sticks. He's 6'6 and on a corner. Just throw it up and let him dunk on the smaller guy. If he makes that throw to the TE, worst case scenario is you throw it too high and BT gets to drill one from 50. Same thing again here. Blake Miller playing pocket pool and Davis trying to anchor against a DE isn't good, but Randall sells it by walking off the line before hitting the gas and separating. By the time the stunt runs past Miller and Davis gets walked into DJ's back pocket, the ball should've already come out. Looks like he's wearing cinderblocks, not Nikes. If you want to see proper mechanics, here you go. Ngata eats up the cushion and DJ plants the back foot, steps slightly open to allow his upper body to rotate through, his shoulders are square to the target, and he rips it. I have no words. That came after he made a good decision to throw the ball away on first down, but prior to that he had hit seven in a row and we we're marching down the field in two-minute drill. Just when things started to settle down, they came unglued again. Right after the half DJ got fired up on this carry and I thought, "Yep, here we come." But after this throw two plays later, my hopium ran out. Look at his feet. Watch his arm slow down. Here's the other pick. It's the same Third-and-Zero clear out with the out route underneath design, but the defense is in cover three. It's hard to see from this angle, but right before the ball is thrown Antonio has tons of room over to the left because the underneath route by Beaux draws in the flat defender. Frankly I'm not too upset about this because albeit an aggressive throw, it's one DJ has made several other times this year. By this point two things are clear - it's just not DJ's day and he's compounding errors by trying to make up for the last mistake with a big play. We've seen him be much more consistent mechanically, show higher level pocket awareness, be more mobile and agile in the pocket, and we've seen him keep the ball out of danger. All of this stuff is super fixable and I'm more inclined to chalk it up to a bad day at the office than anything more sinister.
If you go back to the first clip of the post, you'll see how we mirror their stack formation and Malcolm Greene is headhunting. This is the exact same thing. He sees it and again almost single-handedly makes the play. Kudos to Wiggins for flowing while engaged the same as Sheridan Jones did in a previous clip as it allowed help time to get there. Now, if you thought Greene being out for basically the whole year hasn't been a big deal, please see me after class. In the first quarter alone he blew up a handful of plays.
We kept going back to the fake swing passes, but here we finally throw to a RB. After we hammer them on a couple more inside gap scheme runs, we actually throw the swing pass. They've seen it a handful of times and don't trigger so Mafah is able to get to the edge where Spector is doing a great job blocking. I don't have the heart to show you how the drive ends on the next play, and I'm sure as hell not clipping that play from the 2012 Orange Bowl that I had a flashback of. So let's talk a little scheme instead. I was really surprised not to see us run more "replacement" routes in this game. Where their LBs line up presnap is the most vulnerable part of the field. Syracuse entered as a defense that blitzed nearly 50% of the time. Couple that with the way those bluffed swing passes were washing a LB off the map and what you're left with is a team who isn't well fortified at the second level. After DJ had shown signs of just being off, we seemed to get him back in rhythm with these throws before ditching them after halftime.
We did a poor job of contain on their final scoring drive, but look at how many guys they have blocking. Six. On the third and goal play, watch how they shift presnap. That TE moves into the backfield and is again providing an extra body to pass block. As Schrader exits the pocket, Trenton does a really nice job disengaging the center who climbed up on him but he takes a poor angle and gets beat to the edge just as Trotter had in the previous clip.
To start the second half, Myles (by the FB because they're still in max protection) and Tyler get justice for being mugged on back-to-back plays. I hope those flags were as cathartic for y'all as they were for me.
I think what hurt me most about Shipley's fumble was that Antonio had set us up. And the way the entire team was playing pissed off, I guarantee we end that drive with six points one way or another.
Immediately following the fumble, Sean Tucker gets loose. But this play right after stood out to me. Did y'all see that? It's that same RB wheel route we'd seen before but Nate ruined the timing and then stuck his nose in there to make a tackle on a guy whose got him by 40+ pounds.
I reckon we know why our DBs aren't playing WR. Got to be the fifth or sixth one this year.
There's not much to judge Klubnik on, but right out of the gate we let him throw one. Sean McDonough says it's not a great throw, but if it's not low and outside I think the defender had a chance to make a play on it. On this second-and-long, he just rolls right into the waiting arms of the DE. If he stops rolling at any point he's got a really clean pocket to scan the field from. After an awful late hit call that went our way, here's another example of the young buck just not being ready. If he has more sense of urgency and checks down to Mafah a couple seconds earlier it's likely a decent gain and he doesn't get his guy decapitated. That being said, we saw flashes of the playmaking. I've seen a few people talking about arm strength and I'm not really worried about it but on throws like this he's got to generate more velocity on the ball.
Ship really does just happen sometimes, doesn't it?
I talked last week about how highly I thought of Robert Anae but this play, and the fact that Sean Tucker finished the game with FIVE rushing attempts has me dumbfounded. In the second half Tucker had two carries for 38 yards and a catch for three more. It's not as if we had any luck slowing him down either. They just forgot to get their best player the ball and I, for one, couldn't thank them more.
To start Syracuse's final drive, KJ unloads on Schrader. I know I'm not the only one who thought of XT's 2018 sack on Dungey to ice the game. Unfortunately it didn't end quite so quietly. We dropped back to avoid giving up a walkoff homerun and it finally paid off once the field got a little more condensed.
I didn't show many of our 60 rushing attempts, but I don't think anybody needs me to tell them that Shipley and Mafah played their hearts out. Both ran the same way they always do - with bad intentions. Klubnik was in four drives and attempted four passes. As much as the national media will make of it, the play-calling showed that this was more Dabo saving DJ from himself than a backup QB truly leading a rally. We leaned on the RBs/OL for the entire game, but that final quarter and a half we told those guys to go win us the game and it's exactly what they did. The defense deserves so much credit for how they answered. They gave up plays here and there but it was a nearly flawless second half where they allowed 90 yards (45 on the final drive) on 29 plays, and not a single point. Again, Syracuse shoulders some blame for not getting their playmakers more touches down the stretch, but what it came down to is championship mettle and depth. We had both, they had neither. For as much as I wonder about the ceiling for this team, I can't help but point out that the floor is extremely high. The bye couldn't have come at a better time. We need a little R&R because orange britches season is upon us.
Note: I was most of the way done with this Sunday evening only to come back Monday and find that YouTube deleted the video I had all the clips from due to copyright. I had to scramble to replace everything with clips from the condensed version and timestamps from a different full version. This isn't nearly as clean, but it's the best I could do under the circumstances.
Lets start with this play from Syracuse's opening drive. Let's make note of a few things - 1. They choose not to block Nate Wiggins, 2. Malcolm Greene is shot out of a cannon and they hold onto him for dear life, 3. there's another screen to the boundary-side, and 4. the down and distance. They go right back to a similar play type on the next second and medium. Play design is really good but it's beat by a fantastic defensive call (we'll circle back to this momentarily). They motion away from the boundary to slide the backers, then have the WR run a little inside curl. It's essentially a pick-and-roll as he walls off the corner. Offensively, you anticipate a LB or that CB having to pursue through that "block" to get to Tucker on the sideline. But Greene comes in as the fourth man in pressure so Mascoll drops off into a flat zone and they run right into him. Next snap Greene triggers immediately and nearly ends the play on his own. Sheridan does a good job flowing while engaged which allows Mukuba time to get involved. Dino rolls the dice on fourth down, but Ruke makes a nice play sliding into the throwing lane to get them off the field.
Think Syracuse had been watching all those swing passes out of trips from a week ago? Two plays later, watch Shipley be patient and watch the interior OL move the line of scrimmage. A thing of beauty. Next second down we get into 21 personnel and Shipley motioning out takes their extra defender away, but we gain a numbers advantage by reading off the weakside DE. He stays at home to take DJ and it's 5v4 running right where the LB vacated to chase the swing pass. We end the drive with Shipley pounding it in and I'll be honest with y'all, after a fourth down stop and that fantastic drive I really thought we were about to run them out of the stadium.
I told you we'd circle back to the swing pass. We showed that flat zone off an unbalanced pressure a few times this year, like this one against BC. First play of Syracuse's next possession they go empty and look at KJ. Same thing with KJ in the flats two plays later. Here they hit a big throw across the middle and what I want to point out is the six-man protection. We saw BC do this and eliminate our pass rush. Syracuse had success as well. We've established a pair of tendencies. Our backside DE in standup posture bailing into the flat three times in the last eight snaps and them going into max protection. This TD shows both and it's the exact same look we gave them on Mascoll's TFL with Greene coming off the slot. Notice how Trotter is walled off in pursuit by the curl route. This is a case of showing a wrinkle too often and letting the opposing play caller set it up.
Speaking of tendencies, we love a second-and-long QB draw. Same 21 personnel play as Mafah's near-TD on the opening drive and the effect is the same. Only thing wrong with that play was Ngata throwing a man off the pile and taking us right back to where we started.
Aside from the formation, tell me what's different about this play and this play from last week? Davis and Beaux clear out and you let Zero work into an opening underneath. Only problem I have with it is not running it more. On an early down this is a great concept to steal a handful of yards and keep the run/pass percentage more balanced.
Here's a great example of perimeter blocking. Watch Briningstool turn his feet to keep his back to the ball. That is fantastic. EJ and Spector both get a good piece of their guys too.
Okay, elephant in the room. Let's talk about DJ. I want y'all to go back to the clip of our first snap. That seam shot to Davis Allen. Watch DJ's feet. You see how he shuffles his feet but never actually steps into the throw? It's all arm and it's just ever so slightly underthrown. Now look at this throw. His feet are glued to the ground. That's very 2021 of him. Here's the interception just a few plays after that and are we all looking at his feet? He shuffles, the front foot gets heavy and he shifts his weight instead of stepping into it. You can literally see his arm drag in real time. Schematically, this play is a smash concept. What that means is you're running a curl/flat/quick out underneath with a corner/fade/deep out over top of it. This is deadly against any coverage because it forces a defender to collapse on the underneath route which opens a window to hit it over their head. Conversely if they sink over the deeper route, you've got a really easy completion. On that third down DJ shows poor mechanics, but it's just a poor read. He knows he needs eight and he locks in on Ngata. Briningstool does a fantastic job of running his route to the sticks. He's 6'6 and on a corner. Just throw it up and let him dunk on the smaller guy. If he makes that throw to the TE, worst case scenario is you throw it too high and BT gets to drill one from 50. Same thing again here. Blake Miller playing pocket pool and Davis trying to anchor against a DE isn't good, but Randall sells it by walking off the line before hitting the gas and separating. By the time the stunt runs past Miller and Davis gets walked into DJ's back pocket, the ball should've already come out. Looks like he's wearing cinderblocks, not Nikes. If you want to see proper mechanics, here you go. Ngata eats up the cushion and DJ plants the back foot, steps slightly open to allow his upper body to rotate through, his shoulders are square to the target, and he rips it. I have no words. That came after he made a good decision to throw the ball away on first down, but prior to that he had hit seven in a row and we we're marching down the field in two-minute drill. Just when things started to settle down, they came unglued again. Right after the half DJ got fired up on this carry and I thought, "Yep, here we come." But after this throw two plays later, my hopium ran out. Look at his feet. Watch his arm slow down. Here's the other pick. It's the same Third-and-Zero clear out with the out route underneath design, but the defense is in cover three. It's hard to see from this angle, but right before the ball is thrown Antonio has tons of room over to the left because the underneath route by Beaux draws in the flat defender. Frankly I'm not too upset about this because albeit an aggressive throw, it's one DJ has made several other times this year. By this point two things are clear - it's just not DJ's day and he's compounding errors by trying to make up for the last mistake with a big play. We've seen him be much more consistent mechanically, show higher level pocket awareness, be more mobile and agile in the pocket, and we've seen him keep the ball out of danger. All of this stuff is super fixable and I'm more inclined to chalk it up to a bad day at the office than anything more sinister.
If you go back to the first clip of the post, you'll see how we mirror their stack formation and Malcolm Greene is headhunting. This is the exact same thing. He sees it and again almost single-handedly makes the play. Kudos to Wiggins for flowing while engaged the same as Sheridan Jones did in a previous clip as it allowed help time to get there. Now, if you thought Greene being out for basically the whole year hasn't been a big deal, please see me after class. In the first quarter alone he blew up a handful of plays.
We kept going back to the fake swing passes, but here we finally throw to a RB. After we hammer them on a couple more inside gap scheme runs, we actually throw the swing pass. They've seen it a handful of times and don't trigger so Mafah is able to get to the edge where Spector is doing a great job blocking. I don't have the heart to show you how the drive ends on the next play, and I'm sure as hell not clipping that play from the 2012 Orange Bowl that I had a flashback of. So let's talk a little scheme instead. I was really surprised not to see us run more "replacement" routes in this game. Where their LBs line up presnap is the most vulnerable part of the field. Syracuse entered as a defense that blitzed nearly 50% of the time. Couple that with the way those bluffed swing passes were washing a LB off the map and what you're left with is a team who isn't well fortified at the second level. After DJ had shown signs of just being off, we seemed to get him back in rhythm with these throws before ditching them after halftime.
We did a poor job of contain on their final scoring drive, but look at how many guys they have blocking. Six. On the third and goal play, watch how they shift presnap. That TE moves into the backfield and is again providing an extra body to pass block. As Schrader exits the pocket, Trenton does a really nice job disengaging the center who climbed up on him but he takes a poor angle and gets beat to the edge just as Trotter had in the previous clip.
To start the second half, Myles (by the FB because they're still in max protection) and Tyler get justice for being mugged on back-to-back plays. I hope those flags were as cathartic for y'all as they were for me.
I think what hurt me most about Shipley's fumble was that Antonio had set us up. And the way the entire team was playing pissed off, I guarantee we end that drive with six points one way or another.
Immediately following the fumble, Sean Tucker gets loose. But this play right after stood out to me. Did y'all see that? It's that same RB wheel route we'd seen before but Nate ruined the timing and then stuck his nose in there to make a tackle on a guy whose got him by 40+ pounds.
I reckon we know why our DBs aren't playing WR. Got to be the fifth or sixth one this year.
There's not much to judge Klubnik on, but right out of the gate we let him throw one. Sean McDonough says it's not a great throw, but if it's not low and outside I think the defender had a chance to make a play on it. On this second-and-long, he just rolls right into the waiting arms of the DE. If he stops rolling at any point he's got a really clean pocket to scan the field from. After an awful late hit call that went our way, here's another example of the young buck just not being ready. If he has more sense of urgency and checks down to Mafah a couple seconds earlier it's likely a decent gain and he doesn't get his guy decapitated. That being said, we saw flashes of the playmaking. I've seen a few people talking about arm strength and I'm not really worried about it but on throws like this he's got to generate more velocity on the ball.
Ship really does just happen sometimes, doesn't it?
I talked last week about how highly I thought of Robert Anae but this play, and the fact that Sean Tucker finished the game with FIVE rushing attempts has me dumbfounded. In the second half Tucker had two carries for 38 yards and a catch for three more. It's not as if we had any luck slowing him down either. They just forgot to get their best player the ball and I, for one, couldn't thank them more.
To start Syracuse's final drive, KJ unloads on Schrader. I know I'm not the only one who thought of XT's 2018 sack on Dungey to ice the game. Unfortunately it didn't end quite so quietly. We dropped back to avoid giving up a walkoff homerun and it finally paid off once the field got a little more condensed.
I didn't show many of our 60 rushing attempts, but I don't think anybody needs me to tell them that Shipley and Mafah played their hearts out. Both ran the same way they always do - with bad intentions. Klubnik was in four drives and attempted four passes. As much as the national media will make of it, the play-calling showed that this was more Dabo saving DJ from himself than a backup QB truly leading a rally. We leaned on the RBs/OL for the entire game, but that final quarter and a half we told those guys to go win us the game and it's exactly what they did. The defense deserves so much credit for how they answered. They gave up plays here and there but it was a nearly flawless second half where they allowed 90 yards (45 on the final drive) on 29 plays, and not a single point. Again, Syracuse shoulders some blame for not getting their playmakers more touches down the stretch, but what it came down to is championship mettle and depth. We had both, they had neither. For as much as I wonder about the ceiling for this team, I can't help but point out that the floor is extremely high. The bye couldn't have come at a better time. We need a little R&R because orange britches season is upon us.
